BPSports.net takes note of the selection of Belmont University head men’s basketball coach Rick Byrd to the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics Hall of Fame..

BPSports.net notes that “this is the second straight season that Belmont University has been recognized by the NAIA in such a manner.” Last year the NAIA Hall of Fame inducted Belmont’s three-time NAIA All-American Joe Behling.

Nashville City Paper also notes Byrd’s Hall of Fame induction, and reports on a media tour of the new Curb Event Center, which has already hosted three Belmont volleyball matches and will host its first men’s basketball home game on Nov. 21 when the Bruins play Vanderbilt.

Says the City Paper:

The CEC is the fruition of sorts for Belmont’s transition from the NAIA to NCAA Division I, a process that began seven years ago. After having played for so many years in the old and cramped Striplin Gymnasium – and for the past two seasons in a variety of locations while the CEC was being built – the Belmont basketball teams and other athletic squads now have some 90,000 square feet of state-of-the-art elbow room.
“Our players like it a lot,” said Byrd, who has some significant historical perspective himself, what with this being his 18th season with the Bruins. “I’m particularly happy for our two seniors, Adam Mark and Steve Drabyn. Those two guys have played at Striplin, Municipal Auditorium, Gaylord (Entertainment Center), Aquinas. And now they can end their careers in a facility like this. They really deserve it.”

The City Paper also provides a Curb Event Center slideshow.

The Oct. 4 Tennessean reports on the award-winning volunteer activities of a recent Belmont University graduate in a literacy tutoring program:

For the past three years, Ann-Marie Smiley has served as a tutor and site supervisor for Belmont University’s literacy tutoring initiative with the YMCA Fun Company at Carter-Lawrence Magnet Elementary School. She also served as chairwoman of the annual Belmont Family Literacy Day for three years. For this work, Smiley was nominated for the 2003 Mary Catherine Strobel Award for Youth Volunteer of the Year.
Smiley, who graduated from Belmont in May with a music education degree, has been a driving force behind the Belmont Family Literacy Day. The event is held each spring when more than 150 Belmont students, faculty and staff invite children and their parents to come read books and celebrate the joys of reading and the importance of literacy.

NashvillePost.com and The Tennessean both cover the launch of Belmont University’s first faculty-authored weblog, The Entrepreneurial Mind, by Dr. Jeff Cornwall, holder of the Jack C. Massey Chair in Entrepreneurship and director of the Center for Entrepreneurship at the Massey Graduate School of Business.
View image of the NashvillePost.com story.

Belmont University’s School of Nursing will share $1 million in scholarship aid from HCA Inc. as part of the hospital company’s settlement of a long-running medical billing lawsuit, accroding to today’s Tennessean. Belmont will recieve one third of that sum, with two other Nashville schools’ nursing programs also sharing in the settlement. The Tennessean reports the payments would stem from HCA’s settlement of a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Nashville by several hundred health and welfare funds throughout the country that primarily provide health and retirement coverage to union members. The settlement must be approved by the court.